


Advanced Casting & Applied Magical Praxis

by CypressSunn



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Fillory (The Magicians), M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26197360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/CypressSunn
Summary: “In another life, I would have been a provocateur… a paragon… a king!” wails Eliot in the dean’s office, arm flung over his eyes with affected existential peril. “I would have been a king.”“Instead, in this life, you’ve been awarded the much more arduous task of an adjunct professorship.” Henry Fogg offers a pen and his meagerest pity. “Now enough with the histrionics. Sign on the dotted line.”
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19
Collections: 101 Prompts Meme





	Advanced Casting & Applied Magical Praxis

**Author's Note:**

> I have wanted to try and tell this story for a while. A romance for Quentin and Eliot that leans harder into the magical academia and urban fantasy more-so than the whimsy and nonsense of Fillory. That, and a getting together story where the greatest obstacle facing the pair isn't unruly gods or death. So this narrative will take place only in the modern Brakebills/New York setting and timeline. It will feature a power imbalance between Eliot and Quentin, both adults, one a graduate student and one a newly minted professor. Blanket warning in this fic for depictions of depression, drug use, poor coping skills, and mentions of past abuses of power committed by Brakebills staff. None of the perpetrators will be Eliot or Fogg.
> 
> Chapter fics are something I so rarely attempt as I'm not always sure I am up to the challenge. And while I cannot promise a regular updating schedule, I can promise that all thirteen chapters are settled and planned.
> 
> Please enjoy! and any thoughts or feedback is lovely and appreciated!

“In another life, I would have been a provocateur… a paragon… a king!” wails Eliot in the dean’s office, arm flung over his eyes with affected existential peril. “I would have been a king.”

“Instead, in this life, you’ve been awarded the much more arduous task of an adjunct professorship.” Henry Fogg offers a pen and his meagerest pity. “Now enough with the histrionics. Sign on the dotted line.”

Eliot waits for the punchline. For Mayakovski to descend from the ceiling lamp dressed like one of the village people. For the Brakebills alumni society to parade through en mass, sniggering, and cackling before carrying him off to some debauched indoctrination ritual. Eliot came to Fogg’s office for his student exit interviews, ready to lobby jokes and reminisce about ulcers he had surely given the Dean of Magic in years gone by. He had not realized he was walking into a trap; into an interview for a job he had never applied for. 

The contract proposal before him was airtight. Eliot’s already tried the door and an unlocking charm. There is no way out.

“This isn’t fair, Henry. I’ve done everything you’ve asked! I even graduated. God knows neither of us saw that coming.” Fogg nods in agreement but otherwise lets Eliot protest to his heart’s delight. He has been at this job long enough for there to be no groveling or sniveling that will work on him. “Why play this hand? Why use the last of your ammunition against me to force me into… an advanced casting course? Christ, am I even qualified for that?”

“Yes, actually, to the shock and awe of most who have come to know you. You’ve always been more proficient in your capabilities than you’ve lack of discipline let on.”

“I love to overwhelm my audience with my other talents.” Eliot sighs. “Henry, you know academia and I have always been a temporary dalliance. This—” Eliot prods a finger at the contract, as if it may bite. “This will end badly.”

Fogg sits patiently in his leather-backed chair. His ancient floor clock ticks alongside them. He looks bored, waiting for Eliot to finish his whining.

“For everybody,” Eliot continues. “This will be a disaster for everybody. Yourself included.”

Fogg folds his fingers together and hums ever so cheerily. Eliot’s stomach drops; he knows that sound, and it only ever comes when Eliot is well and truly fucked.

“From where I’m sitting, Mister Waugh, it doesn’t appear that you have a goddamn choice.” The bass seeps into Fogg’s usual baritone. “Three and a half years on this campus, summers included. Classes and laboratories and library materials disrupted, disappeared, or destroyed. All of it in long contrived scenarios that lead back to you, Eliot. Always you. The totality of the damage you’ve inflicted and resources lost or forever altered… I would preferably have avoided counting it all out because the tally is steep. Laughably, monumentally high.”

Eliot stares at his hands, rocking stiffly as the dean carries on.

“In all things, but most especially magic, there are repercussions. Now is when you pay up, Eliot.”

“But what did I actually do to deserve this?” Eliot pleads, ignoring the dean’s perfectly clear explanation. “Yes, I’ve made mistakes. Yes, there were damages. Yes, I did set half my third-year class back a semester. Yes, some people went missing after our parties.” Fogg’s eyes narrow, and Eliot backtracks. “But it’s not like they fell through a crack in the worlds! They all came back… eventually. You taught us that magic has risks, and I chose to live that teaching to the fullest, so who is really to blame here?”

“It will be a fond lesson you can pass on to your own students.”

“Henry, in the grand scheme of things this is unjust and unfair—”

Behind them, the door to the office quite literally blows open. Eliot ducks for cover in his seat, and Fogg tuts a quick spell that reseals the entryway. Splinters and oak fly back together and knit into the tapestry of the door, whizzing past the figure now joining them so abruptly.

“Unjust and unfair,” echoes a calm feminine voice. A woman Eliot vaguely remembers from campus saunters in, the door folding back together behind her. It takes a lot of gall to perform that kind of magic on school grounds, let alone the dean’s office. Eliot should have tried that over his unlocking charms. “See, it’s funny that you say that because it’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“Julia, I’m in a meeting.” Fogg gestures to Eliot, as if it were not apparent he was sitting right there between them both. For a man who just had his front door blown open, he is unreasonably calm.

“I can see that. A meeting where you’re giving away my job.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Eliot turns between the magician, Julia, and back to Fogg. There is some unheard conversation passing between them behind their eyes. One that they do not think Eliot needs to be privy too. If Eliot did not know that Fogg wasn’t psychic, he would have accused them of telepathically talking about him behind his back. Psychics were always inconsiderately rude like that.

This Julia is irate, furious behind her fluster of long dark hair. She waits for the dean to explain himself, but in the end, she breaks first.

“I went to the Office of Academic Affairs to finalize the approval on my course criteria. They told me my class was canceled. Instead, he,” Julia points an accusing finger at Eliot, “is signed up for my timeslot. I told them there must be some mistake because you know I’ve been working on this posting for months!”

“Julia, we can discuss this at a different time.” 

“I don’t know what you’re playing at, Henry—” oh, Eliot thinks, she feels entitled enough to blow the door down and address him by his first name as well — “but if you think he can do half the job I can, you’re wrong.”

“Excusez-Moi!” Eliot stands. He had no desire for the job, but the sneering is uncalled for. 

“Julia, you’ve already been assigned two other courses and a research grant.”

Julia scoffs. “Intermediary classes that anyone could teach.”

“Then we’re sure you’ll do your very best, Miss Wicker,” Eliot remarks, his lip upturned. Because yes, this is Julia Wicker, whom Eliot faintly remembers. A loud, self-satisfied, magical prodigy who skipped all her introductory classes and finished ahead of her entire grade. And sure, Eliot is no prodigy, but he has his own accolades and claims to fame that extend beyond the purely scholastic. Welters Champion, his pick of alum penpals, the orchestrator of this and last year’s trials, and a standing invitation to return to Brakebills South to trade his bottomless ever-replenishing flask spell for various illicit goods. 

Julia shoots daggers at him with her eyes. 

“And we’re sure you will too, Mister Waugh. By doing what you always do, skating by, drinking, and sleeping your way through your classes.” She turns on Fogg. “And when they drag him in front of the board, Henry, for unbecoming conduct and not knowing what the hell he is doing, remember that I told you this would happen.”

Then Julia Wicker departs. This time without slamming the door because she’s seemingly regained some sense of decorum. 

Eliot sits back down, feeling winded and nonplussed. He can’t help but feel he caught the tail end of some long, embroiled drama. 

“What the hell was that?”

Fogg does not elaborate. “A matter that is none of your concern.”

“How could it be none of my concern, the woman looks like she wants my head on a stick.”

“A sense of healthy competition between faculty is good for business.”

“Why not just give her the job, Henry? I don’t even want it.”

Henry raises a single brow. He stands and takes a step to a filing cabinet. With a light touch, the draw juts open violently and out zooms a solitary piece of paper. Settling squarely next to the Contract of Employment lands the Bill of Recompense.

“Take the job, or clear your debt.”

Eliot glances down. The number is astronomical. Far more zeros than Eliot has at his disposal.

“Fuck.” Eliot picks up his pen. “This is blackmail, Henry.”

“The dotted line, Mister Waugh. Or should I say, Professor Waugh?”

Eliot scribbles his name. 

“Please don’t.”

* * *

Eliot spends the dwindling weeks of summer half-assing a curriculum out of the dusty tomes his predecessors left lying around. The lot of them are piled high on the creaky old desk in his new office. New only in relation to him. It was otherwise a terrible adjective to apply to the space. Fogg stuck him in the farthest reaches of the old guildhall on the east end of campus. It is a stone’s throw away from the library proper, and the most boring, unhaunted building on all of campus. It served no other purpose than magical storage and extra space for the knowledge discipline and all other book gobbling freaks.

Every day Eliot has to walk up six flights of stairs, wiping dust from the banisters, accompanied only by the echoes of his footsteps. His assigned room is the last in the corridor, padlocked shut and requiring an obscenely large key to enter. Eliot prays the key will not turn every time, but it always does.

Eliot lets his head fall to his desk and lets out a pathetic sound. He’s never been a saint, yet he did not deserve this.

He’s been here all day and gotten nowhere with his syllabus. Fogg’s made it clear that it is past due. If it is not ready for the first day of teaching, then Eliot is on the hook for all his ills as a student.

“Wow, you really weren’t kidding when you said Fogg was punishing you.” In the doorway is Margo, radiant in a haltered dress and her crown of loose curls. She’s barefoot as she strides up to him, holding a pair of Jimmy Choos in her hand by the stem of their heels. “Getting up here was more intensive than my calisthenics class.”

Eliot smiles, suddenly realizing he missed sharing this drab little school with his partner in crime.

“Hm, is that the one with the coach from Hamburg? With the biceps?”

“Dusseldorf,” Margo chitters, plopping her ample little bottom on Eliot’s desk and balancing her shoes atop his textbooks, “and yes, the biceps are very nice.”

“Shame you can’t enjoy those muscles, now that you’re shacking up with the world’s most boring naturalist.”

“I didn’t march up those stairs for you to judge my romantic entanglements.” Margo leans over and presses a kiss to Eliot’s hairline.

“Then are you here to gloat?” he asks her.

“El?” Margo cocks her head. “When would I ever?”

“Sorry,” he sighs. “Can’t help it. You’d be in a mood, too, if you were blackmailed into _teaching_.”

“What exactly did Fogg have on you? You weren’t all that coherent in your three AM text message SOS.”

Eliot whips open a drawer and pulls out the itemized list that Fogg forwarded him in his thorough vindictiveness. Margo takes a moment glancing down the damning document. “Okay, yeah, I remember that one… and that one… and that time… the prank on the freshmen… the other time we were screwing with the psychics… and that party was fun, but it did go a little off the rails… oh, wait a second.” Margo raises one manicured finger. “You didn’t do this, this, or this.” She directs his eyes to the bulleted points. “I’m the one who enchanted the Welters Hall. You were on that sickening couple’s get-away with Mike when all that went down. Why not just tell the dean?”

“And give you up?” Eliot rests his chin in his hand pointedly. “Bambi, when would I ever?”

It’s impossible, but Margo looks even more beautiful when she smiles back at him. She sweeps down from the desk, and in a twirl, she investigates their surroundings. There’s only so much to see in the barren bookshelves. “So you’re really going to do this? You’re gonna be Professor Waugh?”

“Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“The P-word. I will never get used to it.”

“There’s a lot here to get used to,” Margo muses. “The building is ancient, like black magic ancient.”

“Entirely un-renovated since Oscar Wilde visited the campus. Should have been torn down when they built the new library. Every time I walk by the old book stacks, I expect to see The Weird Sisters bubbling a cauldron, looking for their next Macbeth to ensnare.”

“You say that like you wouldn’t take the out if the chance presented itself.” 

“Oh I would, Shakespearean tragedy and all.”

Margo stops to admire the only spot of color in the spare, empty room. Eliot’s cobalt blue pea coat slung over a wooden chair near the door. A finely tailored gift from Margo’s new fall collection. “El, these drab, boring surroundings, they are only temporary. You know that, right? Because the Eliot Waugh I know has never ever landed himself in a trap he couldn’t squeeze out of.”

Eliot lets her scoundrelous faith wash over him. “I did debate burning the building down and faking my own death. But then I could never be seen in high society magicians circles ever again. What would have been the point of the last three years of magical grad school if not for access to the most powerful and depraved echelons of magicians?”

Margo hums her little condolences. “Well, there are… other things?” she tries.

Eliot groans. “How was the Summer Solstice soiree that the New England coven threw? And don’t lie, you don’t have to pretend you’re not having the time of your life for my sake.”

Margo bites her lip. “It put Ibiza to shame. Although I wished you were there for every second of it.”

She simpers at him in that playful way she does and Eliot feels a little better.

“I keep asking myself, why?” Eliot rubs his temples. “Why did Henry bother to do any of this?”

“Staffing shortage?”

“No. That’s not it. Do you remember Julia Wicker? From two years behind us?”

“Of course. The type-A bitch with more magical talent coming out of her vag than Morgan le Fay? Never did get around to sleeping with her…” Margo trails off. “But what about her?”

“She burst into the middle of Henry hiring-slash-blackmailing me. She accused me of stealing her job as if I had any say in the matter. Turns out she thought she was on lock to teach the course but Henry pulled strings and gave me the assignment instead.”

“Your right, that doesn’t make sense.” Margo shuffles on her bare feet turning to him pensively, concerned. “Julia Wicker isn’t some second rate teaching assistant. She’s gotta be shortlisted to the master magician PhD, handpicked by Fogg himself. Why would he take something like this from his golden pupil and give it to, well no offense, El but you’re not in her league.”

“None taken, I was never vying to be _wunderkind_ material. I wanted a degree and I wanted out. And by third year that first part was negotiable.”

Margo half giggles, glancing away from Eliot. “Let’s be honest. You don’t even remember third year. Not after you and Mike broke it off.”

“Oh, are you the one judging my romantic entanglements now? Is that what you came here for?”

“Hey, I stood by you when Mike McCormick, of all people, broke your heart—”

“He didn’t break my heart,” Eliot protests a bit too loudly.

Margo gives him a sideways look.

“Fine, he broke something.” That much Eliot will admit. “But it wasn’t my heart. And yeah, maybe I caused some minor destruction getting over it. And yes, maybe most of the aftermath is a blur to me.”

Margo shakes her head. “You’re not helping your case, El.”

“You once said I was beyond help, remember?” Eliot laughs despite the fact he shouldn’t. Margo’s nose is crinkles and he knows how much she hates inviting wrinkles to her skin.

“I said that after you nearly drowned in the Van Pelt fountain.” Her tone is serious, and Eliot realizes he’s made a mistake. He doesn’t want to revisit this argument. It had been the worst of their worst. She tried to throw out every drop of alcohol in the Physical Cottage in a rage. They spent days after not speaking to each other. That much he remembers very, very clearly.

“Well, I didn’t drown. The dean intervened, and I had to spend the rest of the year clean and sober.” Eliot gently runs his fingers through Margo’s hair and tucks a few wavy strands behind her ear. She leans into the touch.

“The most boring semester of our lives, but we graduated.” Margo stresses that last bit like it means anything.

“Except now I can’t escape this place!” Eliot’s voice reverberates around the high steeped ceiling. He’d never been a great student. An excellent magician, yes, but a terrible student. Unpunctual, undisciplined, and uninterested in anything that did not serve his own larger ends. “What does Henry expect me to do? Paperwork? Assignments? Grading?”

“Yeah, that about covers it,” Margo nods, her sympathy lessening to his plight. “Maybe with a few lectures thrown in here and there.”

“You come here, empty-handed, to mock me in my hour of need.” 

Margo scoffs. “Empty-handed?”

“I remember bringing a very elaborate arrangement of succulents to your office when you landed the _Runway_ gig. But you don’t even bring me an office-warming gift?”

Margo sticks out her pink tongue at him. “Of course, I brought you something.”

Eliot looks around for any such offering. All he finds are Jimmy Choos still perched on his desk. “Not really my size, Bambi.”

With a swish and a flaunt accompanied by batting her mascara-laden eyes, Margo tuts a small spell. An impressive vintage appears in her hands.

“Champagne? I would have thought our troubles called for something heavier.”

“Eliot, I love you, but if you’re stuck here then you need to woman up.” She swaps the dark green bottle for her shoes, looking ready to leave this horrid place. “And don’t forget you agreed to come to Josh’s birthday party. He is excited to see you there.”

“When is it again?”

“End of November.”

Eliot tugs his collar in the sweltering summer heat. “And you’re telling me now?”

“Because you will forget. I’m gonna remind you again before August ends, and then in September and October.”

“I’ll be there so long as they don’t find me hanging from a rope in the stairwell.”

“Not funny, El,” Margo snaps sweetly from the door. “Buckle down, get it over with it. Or get on with the escape act and find a way out… Like second-year, in Lipson’s class,” she throws over her shoulder with a wink, and then she is gone.

Eliot leans back in his chair, not following her meaning. They hadn’t taken a course with Professor Lipson in their second year. She could not have taken it without him. They had the same course load that year. Except— 

“Oh, Bambi,” he coos to himself when he finally remembers. “I should have known you would be the one to save me.”

* * *

 _Arithmology in Ameliorative Wellness_ , a class Eliot and Margo registered for to make up for their healing magic requirement. Eliot still had no idea what the hell the class was about, seeing as he’d only ever sat in on one lecture. The entire class was canceled after Chloe Brötzmann dropped the course during her psychotic break-up with that hedge witch. That was when Eliot learned of the Brakebills bylaws. Most importantly, about the hard-written rule that any and all courses must have at least ten students enrolled to continue.

Eliot feels a fool for not remembering it sooner. It is like a weight lifted from his shoulders. He submits his syllabus and course requirements, orders a few classroom supplies, and he smiles when the dean asks him how his class is coming along. He even picks the name to send down to the registrar, _Advanced Casting & Applied Magical Praxis_.

It is a meaningless title. No one will sign up for a class like that.

The days draw closer to September. Eliot kicks back and waits. He has his eyes glued to his copy of the class registration sheet. The names appear in deep black ink, slowly trickling in; Victoria Gradley. Alice Quinn. Graham Goldstone. Bowen Loftus. Felix Isler. Daniel Kikuno. Camille Rosenau. Phoebe Becker-Bell. Todd McAllister.

“Shit.”

Eliot starts pacing his office floor. He envisions himself trapped here for months on end. Here, with the sweltering heat, the rattling pipes, the light coming through the wall of stained glass that gave him migraines. So when Poppy Kline signs up and her name lands on the tenth line, Eliot decides he can’t leave any more of this up to chance. Brakebills and Fogg would have to figure out what to do without him. It wasn’t like Julia Wicker wasn’t waiting in the wings. A simple spell is all it takes to make sure Miss Kline’s paperwork goes missing. No one will notice until it is too late. With her off the list, the undersized class is one short. 

Class is dismissed before it even starts.

Later, Eliot decides to stroll by the dean’s office, a pit-stop on his farewell to Brakebills tour. “Give it my all, Henry, but we didn’t quite make it. Guess we better pack it in.”

Fogg is unbothered. “What are you talking about, Eliot?”

“My class, there aren’t enough students enrolled.”

“Ah yes, the red tape. Good old bureaucracy,” Fogg chuckles darkly. “But you don’t have to worry. I double-checked it myself.”

Fogg hands over a separate copy of the register. Eliot snatches it and scans down the familiar names. He expects to see Poppy Kline’s name returned to the bottom of the list, but instead, there’s a newcomer:

_Quentin Coldwater._

Shit.

“Looks like class is in session after all.” The dean’s underhanded delight is transparent. Without a doubt, Eliot has been outmaneuvered. “Best of luck with the coming semester, Professor Waugh.”

He leaves the office still holding the sheet. Shuffling up the hall, it is like the names on the list are taunting him. Eliot has never met this pretentiously named student but even still, he already knows he’s going to hate Quentin Coldwater forever. That or flunk him, at least.

**_cont._ **


End file.
